The Marching Season

conflict, of gunsmoke and cordite, but the first smell that greeted Michael was the stench of manure. The bus passed through a checkpoint, where a pair of RUC officers was tearing apart a van. Fifteen minutes later it reached the city center.
    Downtown Belfast is a charmless place—cold and neat, too new in some spots, too old in others. It was bombed countless times by the IRA, twenty-two times alone on July 21, 1972, Bloody Friday. Northern Ireland was the one place on earth that made Michael uncomfortable. There was a viciousness, an incoherence and medieval quality to the violence, that unsettled him. It was one of the few cities where Michael struggled with language. He could speak Italian, Spanish, French, Arabic, reasonable Hebrew, and passable German and Greek, but English
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    spoken with the hard-edged accent of West Belfast bewildered him. And Gaelic, which many Catholics speak fluently, was meaningless gibberish; to Michael it sounded a bit like a shovel blade plunging into gravel. Still, he found the people remarkably friendly, especially to outsiders, quick to buy you a drink or offer you a cigarette, with a black sense of humor derived from living in a world gone mad.
    He checked into his room at the Europa Hotel and spent ten minutes searching for bugs. He managed to sleep but was awakened by a siren and a recorded voice telling him to evacuate the hotel immediately. He telephoned the front desk, and the girl cheerfully informed him it was only a test. He ordered coffee from room service, showered and dressed, and went downstairs. He had ordered a rental car from the concierge. It was waiting outside in the small circular drive, a bright-red Ford Escort. Michael went back inside the hotel and asked the concierge if the rental company had something in a subtler color.
    "I'm afraid that's all they have now, sir."
    Michael got in the car and drove north along Great Victoria Street. He turned into a small side street, pulled over, and climbed out. He opened the hood and loosened wires until the engine stopped. He closed the hood, removed the keys from the ignition, and walked back to the Europa. He informed the concierge the Escort had broken down and told him where he could find it.
    Twenty minutes later a new car arrived, a Vauxhall, dark blue.
    Kevin Maguire, code name Harbinger, had used a dozen different rendezvous sequences over the years, but he had asked to use his original pattern tonight, three sites scattered around Belfast city
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    center at one-hour intervals. Both men were to proceed to the first site. If either spotted surveillance or felt uncomfortable for any reason, they would try again at the second. If the second was no good they would try the third. If the third site was bad, they would call it a night and try to make the meeting the next evening at three new sites.
    Michael drove toward the first site: the Donegall Quay near the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, over the River Lagan. He knew the streets of Belfast well, and for twenty minutes he engaged in a standard SDR, the Agency abbreviation for a surveillance detection run. He wove his way through the streets of the city center, checking his tail constantly. He went to Donegall Quay, intending to make the meeting, but there was no sign of Maguire, so Michael drove on without stopping. It was not like Maguire to pass on a meeting; he was a seasoned professional terrorist, not the kind of agent to see danger when it wasn't there.
    Kevin Maguire had grown up in the Ballymurphy housing estates during the 1970s, the son of an unemployed shipyard worker and a seamstress. At night he had gone into the streets with the other boys and fought the British army and the RUC with stones and petrol bombs. Once he had shown Michael a childhood photograph, a ragamuffin with cropped hair, a leather jacket, and a necklace of spent shell casings. He had been something of a hero in the Ballymurphy because he was expert at upending army saracens with empty beer barrels. Like most Catholics in West Belfast he admired and feared the men of the IRA—admired them because they protected the population from the Protestant killer squads of the UVF and the UDA, feared them because they kneecapped or brutally beat anyone that stepped out of line. Maguire's father had been kneecapped for selling stolen goods door to door to supplement the family's monthly payment from the dole.
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    Maguire had been a member of